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Health Canada Approves Breakthrough Technology from Pall to Increase Platelet Safety and Availability


WEBWIRE

East Hills, NY (June 19, 2006) - - Pall Corporation (NYSE: PLL) announced today that Health Canada granted it clearance to market the Acrodose™ PL System. The new system gives blood centers the ability to pool and store whole blood derived platelets and conduct a single bacterial detection test that enhances patient safety and increases platelet availability. The resulting AcrodoseSM Platelet provides hospitals with a transfusion-ready product that is safer than currently available whole blood derived platelets. It also reduces the cost burden to hospitals by eliminating the need for additional processing and testing.
“The Acrodose PL System sets a new paradigm in transfusion therapy as it addresses many of the limitations the blood industry faces including platelet availability, compromised safety and high cost,” says Allan Ross, President, Pall Medical. “Blood centers and hospitals will no longer have to make a trade-off between clinical safety and availability. They will now be able to cost-effectively increase the availability of bacterially tested, leukoreduced and pooled whole blood derived platelets.”

Adequate availability of safe platelets is a fundamental blood transfusion challenge. There is a disparity in the level of safety that currently exists between platelets that are derived from a one to two hour procedure called apheresis (single donor) or from standard whole blood collections. The Acrodose PL System eliminates the safety and availability disparity by providing a cost-effective way to test all types of platelets for bacterial contamination using a highly sensitive culture-based test. Bacterial contamination of platelets is the leading infectious cause of sickness and death from a blood transfusion.

Apheresis platelets, although limited by donor availability and time-consuming and capital intensive to collect, are generally tested for bacterial contamination using a highly sensitive culture detection method. Whereas, whole blood derived platelet units are often tested for bacteria using less sensitive methods, such as dipsticks or pH meters, due to cost, product loss, and logistical constraints of testing several individual units to obtain a standard therapeutic dose. With the Acrodose PL System, whole blood derived platelets can be pooled and tested for bacteria as a single testing sample using a highly sensitive detection method. This cost-effectively increases the safety of transfused platelets and ensures that this valuable blood resource is more readily available.

Platelets are the blood component responsible for clotting functions, and are typically administered to patients undergoing chemotherapy, treatments related to organ transplant or victims of severe burns. On average, platelets are outdated and discarded in five days making access to this lifesaving blood product precarious and costly, and especially problematic in emergency situations.

“There has been a very positive reception to and adoption of the Acrodose PL System in both large and small blood centers across the United States. We are pleased that patients and their providers throughout Canada will now be able to reap these same platelet safety and availability benefits,” adds Ross.

There are approximately 130,000 platelet transfusions performed annually in Canada and another 2.1 million platelet transfusions annually in the U.S. Health Canada is the federal department responsible for helping Canadians maintain and improve their health. As part of its mission, it regulates and approves the use of thousands of products including biologics, medical devices and pharmaceuticals.

About Pall Corporation
Pall Corporation is the global leader in the rapidly growing field of filtration, separations and purification. Pall’s business is organized around two broad markets: Life Sciences and Industrial. The Company provides leading-edge products to meet the demanding needs of customers in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, transfusion medicine, semiconductor, and water purification, aerospace and broad industrial markets. Total revenues for fiscal 2005 were $1.9 billion. The Company headquarters is in East Hills, New York with extensive operations throughout the world. Visit Pall at http://www.pall.com/.



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Editor’s Note: Photos and additional information are available on http://www.pall.com/corporate_40242.asp



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